Intel’s long-expected Xeon E5 processor may have a narrower launch window. A rumor floated by Digitimes’ industry contacts had the E5-2600 series and their matching C600 mainboard chipsets arriving in March. About 15 processors would start the line, beginning with the quad-core, 1.8GHz Xeon E5-2603 at a $202 bulk price and scaling up to the range-leading eight-core, 2.9GHz Xeon E5-2690 at $2,057.
The first wave would stick to single- and dual-socket systems based on the Romley-EP platform, the insiders said. A four-socket version and the Romley-EN would be coming later. In the nearer term, updated Itanium processors and their 7500 chipsets would arrive relatively soon after.
Spring would see the budget E5-2400 series arrive. Details weren’t specified, but they would cost between $192 and $1,440 each.
The E5-2600 should catch up Intel’s mid-range Xeon for workstations and servers, bringing it to the 32 nanometer Sandy Bridge architecture and increasing cache sizes to as much as 20MB for eight core versions.
